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Join Thousands Now Visiting the Institute...Online
In recent months, for obvious reasons, the American Revolution Institute has become an online institution. Our work has moved from Anderson House, where we welcome visitors, share ideas with teachers, colleagues, Society members, and Institute Associates, and present our rich collections of manuscripts, books, art, and artifacts—to the American Revolution Institute website, where we are now welcoming visitors, sharing ideas, and presenting our collections to an audience that is growing at a dramatic rate. Traffic on our website has grown over five hundred percent since March. Traffic doubled in the last four weeks alone, as thousands more people have turned to the Institute for basic information, scholarly resources, teaching tools, news, commentary, and intellectual engagement with the people, events, and ideas of the American Revolution and their continuing relevance in our lives. Your support makes this possible.
If you haven’t visited us online recently, you haven’t seen a great deal of new content. We add pages every day. We urge you to visit us online, entering the site through the homepage. Scroll down to News: today it’s about a happy subject—the current effort to preserve the home of General Benjamin Lincoln for the public. Move on to New Online— this week it’s Treasures of the American Revolution. You can learn the latest about our exhibitions before reaching the portal to our current blog post: the current one is about Jeffrey Brace, an enslaved man who secured his freedom by serving in the Connecticut Continental Line and lived to tell his story in one of the first memoirs of a black American ever published, which is now one of the rarest books on the American Revolution. We think his story deserves wide circulation.
Visit the Institute Online
Revolutionary War Presentation Swords...in Detail
During the Revolutionary War, the Continental Congress awarded fifteen presentation swords to officers who displayed exceptional bravery and commitment to the cause. Not all of these swords are known to survive, but two are preserved in the collections of the Institute—the only organization to own more than one of these treasured artifacts. One of these two swords was awarded to Lt. Col. Tench Tilghman, the longest-serving aide-de-camp to George Washington and the man entrusted with carrying the momentous news of the victory at Yorktown to Congress in October 1781—239 years ago this month. The second sword was awarded to Lt. Col. Samuel Smith of the Maryland Line for his gallant leadership in the defense of Fort Mifflin in November 1777. These elegant, French-made swords of silver and gold are among the gems of our collections, documenting the importance of the officers’ actions and bearing rich symbols of American independence and the new republic. The swords are featured in our new online feature, Masterpieces in Detail.
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The Next George Rogers Clark Lecture
A traditional feature of our fall calendar of events, the George Rogers Clark Lecture, will be presented on April 30, 2021, instead of late October 2020. Since 1975 the lecture has featured some of the greatest academic historians of our time, including Samuel Eliot Morison, Edmund S, Morgan, Bernard Bailyn, Gordon Wood, and Pauline Maier, as well as some of our generation’s most thoughtful popular historians, including David McCullough. The next Clark lecture will be presented by Rick Atkinson, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for the first volume of his trilogy on the United States Army in World War II. He has been a frequent researcher in our library. The first volume of his new trilogy on the American Revolution, The British Are Coming, is one of the most notable books of the year, and just won the annual George Washington Book Prize. His April 30 lecture will be broadcast live on the internet. You can watch some of the recent Clark Lectures at Watch & Learn Online.
Watch Pauline Maier’s Clark Lecture on the Constitution
A Call for Scholars
The Institute’s library is offering several fellowships to graduate students and other scholars of early American history for the year 2021 who are conducting research that may benefit from the library’s vast collections. Boasting over fifty alumni, the Institute is looking forward to continuing the tradition of welcoming scholars who will use the library collections containing contemporary books, manuscripts, art work, and period maps to support their in-depth study of the Revolutionary era. The deadline for applications is November 6, 2020. To learn more about fellowship opportunities, including how to apply and meeting our current and past fellows, visit the Research Fellowships page. To learn more about our collections visit Discover the Collections.
Learn More About Fellowships
Discover the Collections
Become an Associate...or Recruit One
Join the American Revolution Institute of the Society of the Cincinnati today and help perpetuate the memory of the people and events that secured our national independence, created our national identity, and articulated our highest ideals. If you’re already an Associate, help us recruit another one...or more. That’s how movements grow. Together we can ensure that Americans understand and appreciate the constructive achievements of the American Revolution— achievements that define us still. Associates join in the work of an organization as old as our republic, founded by the heroes of the Revolution. Our ambitions are large and we need you and your relatives, friends, and colleagues with us to achieve them.
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Who we are, What we do
Rachel Nellis, a native of Batavia, Illinois, is the research services librarian for the American Revolution Institute. She received her undergraduate education at Saint Louis University and earned her Master of Science in Information Systems at the University of Texas at Austin. Rachel is working on the Institute’s Digital Library by digitizing and making the digital images accessible from the library’s many collections including manuscripts, prints and engravings, rare books, and maps.
Recently, Rachel managed the migration of the Digital Library to an upgraded version of the online repository. This Digital Library has a new, modern look with the same great content. Her work of digitizing and uploading to the Digital Library increases accessibility to primary sources from the Revolutionary era for the public. Additionally, Rachel works with researchers to help them access the materials from the library—this has become especially critical during a time when researchers have been unable to visit Anderson House in person.
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The American Revolution secured our independence, created our republic, established our national identity, and expressed ideals of liberty, equality, natural and civil rights, and responsible citizenship that have defined our history and will define our future. The American Revolution Institute of the Society of the Cincinnati promotes knowledge and appreciation of those achievements, fulfilling the aim of the Continental Army officers who founded the Society of the Cincinnati in 1783 to perpetuate the memory of that vast event. The Institute supports advanced study, presents exhibitions and other public programs, advocates effective classroom instruction, and provides resources to teachers and students to enrich understanding of the American Revolution and the principles of the men and women who secured the liberty of the American people.
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